Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “α”

FROMPRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS

Principles of Social Economics,by S. Altmann...K. Bücher and many others.

Section V, Part II: “Banking” (Schulze-Gaevernitz and

Jaffé), Tübingen, 1915.

I. Schulze-Gaevernitz, “The German Credit Bank” (1-190).II. EdgarJaffé, “Anglo-American and French Banking” (191-231).(More like a textbook, by paragraphs, apparently mostly chatter and “systematics”.)

p. 53:in 1914 eight Berlin big banks owned

p. 140: Specialisation: “Money and Credit Operations”.

cf. p. 11: there were 14,000 banking houses in Germany in 1907, of which 4,000 were auxiliary establishments....

p. 145: ... “The big banks have become the most important means for theeconomicunification of the German Reich”....

p. 164 quotesJ. Lewin, German Capital in Russia, St. Petersburg, 1914.

Everywhere (passim), throughout, Schulze-Gaevernitz’s tone is that of triumphant German imperialism, of a triumphant swine!!!!

State Bank endorsement and clearing operations (thousand

millionmarks)

“Democratisation” of banking!![14]Compare the one-pound shares in Great Britain and the minimum of 1,000 marks in Germany (p. 111).[4]The average size of a bill of exchange in Germany =2,066marks (State Bank); in France it is683francs (Banque de France).

“Even today, Great Britain, as the international intermediary for payments, is said to earn about 80 million marks annually as commission on acceptances. It is said that6,000 millionmarks are paid annually through Great Britain for the overseas trade of Europe” (83).

p. 100: § entitled “The Banks’ Domination over the Stock Exchanges?”—This is said to be an exaggeration but “their [the banks’] influence is far-reaching”....

Issues (p. 104):

Issues in Germany (at market value)

The author concludes:

“The statistics of issues very clearly reveal the state-socialist and industrial colouring of the German national economy” (104).

Germany’s “Prussian railway system”, the author says, is “the greatest economic undertaking in the world” (104)....

Joint-Stock Companies in Prussia in 1911

Wiewiorowski, The Effect of the Concentration of German Banks on

Crisis Phenomena(Freiburg Thesis), Berlin, 1911.

Chapter X. “Foreign Investments.”

N.B. [cf. above, p. 44 quotation: from pp. 159-60[10]] N.B.

Quoting facts confirming “export stipulations” and the benefit accruing to industry from foreign investments, Schulze-Gaevernitz says, incidentally, that France also benefits from this:

(N.B.: p. 1, note. “Writtenbeforethe war.”)

In Chapter X.

The second part of the book, the work ofJafféis a dry-as-dust survey of Anglo-American and French banking. Nil.

Section VI ofPrinciples of Social Economics. “Industry, Mining, Building.” Tübingen, 1914.

Many source references (cf.p. 37[11]).

For statistical data on big industry see ruled notebook.[12]

From the article byM. R. Weyermann: “Modern Industrial

Technique.”

Issues of German industrial shares {according to theFrankfurter

Zeitungand theDictionary of Political Science} ((“New

Issues”))

According toBehr’s data, consumption of footwear in the

United States was (p. 175):

FromTh. Vogelstein’sarticle “Financial Organisation of

Capitalist Industry and Formation of Monopolies”.

From the history of cartels:

“The great revolution commenced with the crash of 1873, or rather, the

depression which followed it and which—with hardly discernible

interruptions in the early eighties, and an unusually violent but

short-dived boom about 1889—occupies twenty-two years of European

economic history” (222)....

...“During the short boom of 1889-90, the system of cartels was widely resorted to in order to take advantage of favourable business conditions. An ill-considered policy sent prices soaring more rapidly and steeply than would have been the case if there had been no cartels, and nearly all these cartels ended ingloriously in the ‘grave of bankruptcy’. Another five-year period of bad trade and low prices followed, but a new spirit reigned in industry. The depression was no longer regarded as something to be taken for granted; it was regarded merely as a pause before another boom.

Forms of cartels:

a) Cartels fixing sales conditions (terms, time limits,payment, etc....)b) Cartels fixing the sales areasc) Cartels fixing output quotasd) Cartels fixing pricese) Cartels fixing distribution of profit

Syndicate—single sales office (Verkaufsstelle)

Trust—ownershipof all enterprises

[1]Ibid., p. 303.—Ed.

[2]See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 303-04.—Ed.

[3]Ibid., p. 211.—Ed.

[4]See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 228.—Ed.

[5]Ibid.—Ed.

[6]See present edition, Vol. 22 p. 218.—Ed.

[7]See present edition, Vol. 22. p. 211.—Ed.

[8]Ibid., p. 219.—Ed.

[9]See present edition. Vol. 22 p. 220.—Ed.

[10]See p. 59 of this volume.—Ed.

[11]See pp. 50-51 of this volume.—Ed.

[12]This refers to Notebook “μ”. see pp. 464—65 of this

volume.—Ed.

[13]See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 200-02.—Ed.

[14]Lenin refuted the apologetic inventions about the “democratisation”

of capital as far back as 1902. He conclusively showed that individual

workers acquiring small shares do not become owners of joint-stock

enterprises, “propertied” people. The ones who profit from the issue of

small shares are the big shareholders of the capitalist monopolies and

joint-stock companies—they use for their enrichment even the very small

crumbs of the people’s savings



(see present edition, Vol. 6, p. 96).



p. 61

[15]In theNotebooksandImperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism, Lenin exposes the bourgeois-apologetic nature of

“organised capitalism”, an unscientific theory that seeks to prove that

imperialism is a special, transformed capitalism which has abolished

competition, anarchy of production and economic crises, and has achieved

planned economic development. This theory, advanced by the ideologists of

monopoly capitalism—Sombart, Liefmann, etc.—was seized upon by Kautsky,

Hilferding and other reformist theoreticians of the Second

International. Lenin demonstrated that monopolies’ rule, far from

abolishing, intensifies competition and anarchy of production, and does not

rid the capitalist economy of crises



(see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 208).



p. 62

[16]In his study of imperialism, Lenin showed that political reaction in

all aspects of home and foreign policy is the political superstructure of

monopoly capitalism. Imperialism, he pointed out, is the negation of

democracy in general



(see present edition, Vol. 23, p. 43).



Monopoly capitalism curtails or nullifies even formal bourgeois democracy,

and establishes its unlimited dictatorship.

The characteristic features of imperialist for policy are aggression,

violation of the national sovereignty of weak and dependent countries.



p. 69